Not long after Epic announced OS X support for its Unreal Engine game middleware, the company has another announcement to make: Using the just-released Flash Player 11, UE3 is now coming to web browsers, further cementing the browser's position as the most important thing installed to your computer.

According to Epic's press release, the Unreal Engine will leverage the new Flash Player's Stage 3D APIs to enable browser games with graphics previously seen only on locally installed games. If it can pick up traction, I would expect it to eventually lead to Quake Live-esque browser games that look a bit less like PC games from a decade ago. This could also be great for game demos, which could now in theory be played in a window on the developer's website instead of downloaded to your hard drive.

This announcement should be welcomed for game developers already using Unreal Engine 3, since they'll be able to port their software to browsers without having to rebuild their games from the ground up. Expect to see prettier browser-based games as Flash 11 is more widely adopted.